Cindy dinner and ride reports!

[Duck on Wheels]

Let's see, my Cinderella ride in brief: headwind, headwind, hills, rain, *&^% headwind, hills, pouring rain, headwind, drizzle, lemon drop hill with headwind, freezing rain or maybe light sleet or hail, headwind pedaling to keep moving downhill, rain...

Ditto to that. Lay awake the night before listening to downpour, but the forecast was that it would clear up to scattered showers by 7am, so we loaded up the bikes and headed for registration. I bought some rain pants at the start area and was glad I had'em even if they are bright yellow and my rain jacket is wine red. Made it easy to find my photo after the ride. Also kept me warm and dry through the first, heaviest showers. But as the day developed it wasn't the rain that was the worst problem, it was the wind. And the anticipation of wind. You'd make a turn with a sigh of relief - out of that headwind at last! - then see the next turn just a mile up the road taking you back into the headwind again for G.d knows how far. The headwind stretches were longer than the sidewind ones ... and felt twice as long as that again! And on one expecially long one there was a dead skunk at the far (upwind) end! I kid you not! Luckily for me I have a somewhat nostalgic feeling about the distant smell of skunk (like driving home out in the countryside where I grew up), but even I was relieved when we finally passed that skunk and put it downwind of us. It was getting too close for nostalgia.

Anyways ... my first ride since - hmmm, when was that last one? I had my youngest on the kid seat behind me and my oldest rode alongside on her own. So that would be 20 years ago. We did the 34 km route, + a few more from home to the start line. DH did the long route 'round the lake and met us at the lunch stop. This time I did 43 miles. That would be hmmm 43x1.6 is 43+24+1.8= is this right? almost 69 km? Ohmygosh! That's from home to Hell and back and halfway to Hell again! I wouldn't ever have thought I could do that!

Well, I've had a long night's sleep. My quads are still sore, but less so than yesterday. No other pains anywhere, which is good. Guess my bike - clunky and heavy and inefficient as it is, at least fits well. I also learned how to deal with the ostomy problem (for those who remember my "really embarrassing" post). The solution is called Gel-X. One tab in the bag, replace every time you empty. Just carried a small pill box of spare tabs. Otherwise, my gut was being quite cooperative, letting me eat just about anything (although I still avoid high fiber items like oranges and power bars, had to use gu instead of the latter, and the bananas were great!)

Thanks, Mel, for keeping me company. I'm sure you'd have done better going a bit faster early on, before we hit those headwinds. Maybe I'll see you on another ride come June-July. Maybe by then I'll be in shape to do better at my share of pulling.

Oh, and p.s. In spite of the weather and the dead skunk, the scenery was beautiful! Service was good too. Even registration wasn't as slow as people had lead me to expect. If I weren't gonna be in Norway this time next year, I'd do it again.